


Aurelia

by The_Valley_of_The_Dorks



Series: Aurelia: Planet Zero [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Androids, Multi, No Sex, Religion, Robots, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, Terraforming, emotionally stunted characters, infomorphs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-20 23:36:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2447243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Valley_of_The_Dorks/pseuds/The_Valley_of_The_Dorks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naledi's just your average 13 year old Base Type Human Reproductive Female, living in the 23rd Century After Mars. Except for the part where she accidentally sets all of humanity back millions of years through sheer force of poor forethought alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Prologue

_Sometimes the old women told stories they claimed were the stories of the ancestors. Stories passed from generation to generation through the tribe’s Speaker. As every tribe grew and split these stories were spread across the earth, told and retold. Changed and evolved._

_The oldest story ever told, was of a woman who was the stars and the sky and the earth. They called her All._

_The story was first told by an ancient dying woman of The Other who spoke to the trees and whispered sacred sayings with the air. She was of the first tribe of the Earth. She gathered the men and women and children around her and told them of the whisperings of the stars. The tales of All, and how her children came to be._

_All simply was._

_She was not born or made. She just was. And as she was, children grew within her, so many children, and they were all stars. The stars played together in groups, but there were so many of them, even the groups were uncountable. One day, after All had had each of her children, they came to have their own children, The Sun had the Earth, The Earth had the moon and the ancestors. The ancestors and the moon were human, just like the tribe, but they were different, they were so tall they reached up to the heavens and they were blue and green and purple. They had canoes to travel the earth and stars and the darkness between, great big canoes that carried them among All’s many, many children. But the ancestors were selfish and violent. One day they tried to kill one of All’s children for her precious honey. It was so much honey, that the ancestors became greedy at the sight of it. But All found out, and became very mad. She took the canoes from the ancestors and all their honey, and she made them small and plain. And they became like the tribe, and when they had children, they were also like the tribe. And when the earth is cruel to the tribe it is All punishing the ancestors for trying to kill her child._

_It is the story of creation._

_***_

Yellow-Hair was standing on the side of the mountain with her eyes fixed down on the Wide River, watching the movements of her tribe along its banks, trying to catch the blue and greenfish they feasted on when buffalo and zebra migrated to the plains against the cold winds that harkened winter. It was still warm, but the shade grew colder and colder day after day, and some of the old women were already making dotted blankets of giraffe hide for the young ones, and the king lazed in alpaca fur when the winds came in.

Several of the young warriors had their spears angled towards the water, engaged in a competition of some kind, over who could catch the most greenfish, presumably. Behind them deer grazed quietly on short grass and the berries that grew on bushes and low hanging trees.

A cold breeze lifted her hair off her shoulders, startling her, and directing her gaze towards the direction of the wind. She caught a glimpse of something surprisingly white beneath a thin bed of leaves, in the shade of a pine tree. She reached for the thing, which was heavy and thin. As it rose from  the ground, she became more and more astounded by it. It was like the thinnest, whitest leaf, with sharp corners, attached to a lot of other thin, sharp leaves, all bound together at the bottom. She regarded the thing, confounded. Across all the leaves, flat little ants made unattractive, repetitive shapes, like the cave paintings of the old women, but small and resembling nothing she had ever seen before. She cradled the thing in both hands. It was light like a guinea pig. And as she held it together in the way it seemed intended to be held, with two leaves covering all the other leaves on either side, she saw that the top leaf had another cave-painting on it, but this one was of a woman, with dark hair and skin and soft brown eyes. More ants crawled along the page, but this time larger and blue.

 She frowned. What was this thing?

So enthralled was she, that she didn’t hear the crunch beneath Small-Deer’s feet as she walked up beside her.

‘What you doing?’ Small-Deer asked, startling Yellow-Hair from her reverie.  Small-Deer was older than Yellow-Hair, 16, with a young girl named Red-Clay to her name and a side of the cave she shared with Large-Buffallo and Wide-River. Yellow-Hair still tanned hides and prepared deer at her mother’s side most days, although she had caught Loud-Tiger staring from time to time. She was fifteen now, old enough to have some babies and share space with men, but she tried not to think about that, it made her body feel hot.

‘You know what this?’ She held the leaves to her friend who frowned.

‘Not know. Not see before. Mother ask where you.’

‘Tell mother fishing.’

‘Lie.’

‘Yes. Lie. I am woman now. Can lie.’

‘Loud-Tiger ask where you. Tell him fishing?’

Yellow-Hair blushed ferociously. ‘Tell him come soon.’

‘So lie for mother, tell Loud-Tiger come soon? You want Loud-Tiger babies.’

‘No.’

‘Lie. You pretty. Have three, four men. Have more. Make many babies.’

‘Go now,’ Yellow hair pouted, and started pushing Small-Deer away.

‘Tell Loud-Tiger you want many babies, many Loud-Tiger babies. Only Loud-Tiger. No other men babies.’

‘ _No’_ Yellow-Hair whined. She knew Small-Deer was bluffing, but the idea of being the type of woman who only had one man, like some of the mad old ladies who spoke to the walls and thought people were their dead men, scandalized her inconceivably. If Loud-Tiger heard that sort of thing, he would probably never want to have babies with her. 

Small-Deer relented and started walking away with no more threats to her reputation, and she realized she was still holding the bound white leaves in her hand. She frowned at them, and thought she should put them down. Small-Deer hadn’t cared about it, and there was no reason she should. And besides, Loud-Tiger was calling after her, and he was so very handsome.

But something about those flat ants compelled her; sought after her. Like they were trying to tell her something.

She let it fall open, grabbing a single leaf this time, and peering at the ants, willing them to reveal to her their secrets. She narrowed her eyes at the leaf.

Time slowed, the universe contracted to a single point. Sweat condensed on her skin. Her neurons prickled.  Everything stopped.

“— _but then, Annabelle knew she was being selfish, but how could she stop herself. She wanted him, he wanted her. Why could things never be that easy? Jerome was a real catch. A volunteer fireman/ successful doctor, with an inheritance and the ability to look absolutely adorable with a two-year old wasn’t just going to fall on her lap again. So, okay, it was so selfish. But it was for a good cause. Right…..?Right.--”_

Yellow-Hair nearly fell; her head was being torn apart by a terrible head ache. Her mouth was dry, and her jaw was on fire. It took her a moment to realize she was bleeding from her nose before the world went black, as she fell forward, consumed with pain.


	2. Quiet Company

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our heroin sets up the chain of events that leads to humanity's downfall *not proofread :c*

Naledi was staring at the space outside the craft window inch slowly forward at a mind numbing 10,000 kilometres a minute, barely crawling forward across the spaceport highway. She sighed again, loudly this time and watched as her breath fogged up the HGYN glass-hybrid.

She was upset. Very upset. She doubted her parents understood just how upset she was because, as loudly and vehemently as she constantly reminded them of her level of upsetness; they never seemed to react with the right amount of concern. Infact, they reacted with zero concern whatsoever. Which made her _even more_ upset.

All she could do was stare out the window at the wide unyielding endlessness that was the rest of the Milky Way, going on forever and ever. The echoey blankness of space mirrored her insides perfectly. She felt empty. She knew that from now on she was going to go without so much.

She hoped her dad would have pity on her. She hoped he could somehow manage to convince her mother to turn the craft around and take her home.

Her dad was always much more understanding. He was always the one who knelt beside her bed and gave her a big squeeze after she’d fought with her mother. Even after his _big accident_ Naledi had found comfort in his warmth when they were alone and she was scared or crying.  When her mother had transferred his consciousness into a stream of ones and zeros and coded him into a robot body with a holographic shell, she had been wary at first. But it turned out Robo-Dad was still dad, with his awkward jokes and his _so fifteen years ago_ fashion sense. She loved Robo-Dad the same as real dad, even though, sometimes hugging cold metal felt like a betrayal. Like a bait and switch. She still called him Daddy when she needed him most… or just really wanted something.

The years without her dad had been the hardest years of her life. In between his death and subsequent resurrection, she had come to fully know loneliness like a quiet, consuming ghost at her side. Without daddy no games had been any fun, no food had been yummy and no boys worth swooning over. And when he’d come back no longer biological, she’d avoided and ignored replacement dad for a good few months before accidentally laughing at his ‘What does a sub-lightspeed craft have in common with an artificially aged sky-whale,’ joke even though she’d heard it a million times didn’t think it was even remotely funny. Robo-Dad wasn’t bio dad, and it would never be the same, but Robo-Dad still had the same terrible sense of humor and dressed like a dinasour and that mattered. He had always been on her side before, and Robo-Dad was no different. He stuck up for her when mother was being cruel and unusual. He’d let her stay out under water an extra thirty minutes after curfew. He let her have extra dessert. And that was how she learned to love him again.

But sometimes when mother was being extra bossy Robo-Dad, just like Bio-Dad, didn’t stick up for her. It was totally unfair when he left her in the lurch; just let her hang there facing down mother and her logic loops and rhetorical questions.

Last month, for example when mother had thrown up the bombshell that they were moving. Robo-Dad had done literally nothing. The ensuing shouting match between Naledi and her mother had probably woken neighbors, but Robo-Dad had stayed tacit like this wasn’t a huge freaking deal. He had said diddly-squat in her defense, even though this was her life Mother was ruining. Later that night when Naledi had been in her room, eyes stinging from crying and crying and crying into her pillow, he’d come sneaking in and tried to joke with her and make her laugh so she’d talk to him.

‘Come on,’ he’d giggled. ‘Keep frowning like that and you’ll become the new Face of Boe.’

No reply.

‘Naledi, come on. Daddy can’t keep cracking _himself_ up.’

‘ _Go away_.’ Naledi had burrowed deeper under the covers.

‘Sweatheart, your mom is just trying to do what’s best for you.’

‘Leave.’

‘Honey, I know you don’t understand but your mom and I love you, we’re just looking out for you. An A1 planet is better for—‘

‘ _Love me?!‘_ Naledi had spat hatefully, tears brimming her eyes. ’She hates me, you _know_ she hates me! She just wants to make me leave all my friends because they’re _‘bad for me’_. Because Oceanis is ‘ _bad for me’_ , because she thinks I’m an idiot. And you’re just a _robot_. You’re just thinking in binary code you don’t know what love is so stop acting like you’re my dad and _go away!_ ’

With the her bedcovers over her head Naledi had only heard the eventual sound of shuffling feet against the angry beating of her shameful heart, already pouring over with regret.

‘I’m an android actually. Darling. I’m so, sorry.’ He had murmured before shutting the door on her.

A whole month later and she still cringed to remember it. She longed to apologise but had no clue how. It was easier just to pretend it had never happened. To laugh along just a little harder and make inane conversation. They both knew she felt the arrows of guilt deep in her bad heart, but neither knew what the first step was. So their friendship had re-grown in a broken uncomfortable way with the obvious edges sticking out and bits missing. They both pretended like it never happened. Dad pretending, for her sake, like she had never said it.. And she, knowing that even though she was so very very wrong, she was also quite right. He wasn’t her father. But he was still her father. It was confusing and terrible.

Right now, she was being very much the angry teenager she felt like she had every right to be.

Her rotten behavior aside, it irked her that Dad didn’t spring to action, saving the day like he was supposed to. It irked her just as much that Mother was being her usual cold hearted self. Her parents were both in the next cabin, ignoring the fact that her life was in ruins. How was that _fair._

She heaved another, even heavier sigh. And no, dad didn’t come rushing in. _Disappointing_. She slumped down against the domed clinical white walls of the craft and sank to the floor, her mind whirling about in a circle of angst and self pity.

She was going to miss her friends, Misty and Evalon more than anything.

When she was new in school, only five, before her parents could find her a place in a surface school with other base type humans, she had met Misty and Evalon in her sub-primary class, sitting in the back and separated from everyone else. Misty with her bright green tail and radiant pink gills, body slightly smaller than the average Oceanian, eyes big and blue with strange patterns on the surface and Evalon with two too many fins and gills that seemed slightly stretched out, would always stick out amongst the others; and of course Naledi the base-type human with a pastel pink mechanical tail and artificial gills and skin too dark to see in certain crevasses, whose mother was one of the brightest minds of the entirety of the human race. The three girls had been fast friends, each weird and unpopular in a distinct and obvious way but sincerely believing that ultimate popularity was just around the corner.

They had stuck together through thick and thin. Through bullying and infighting and bad schoolwork and all kinds of violent cute-boy induced fits. And _oh_ that year when they’d all had a simul-crush on Verfey, that 7”9 creature of pure delight working at the Diet Shop and made total fools of themselves crashing (trying to) his very grown up party. And _oh_ that time Blo had given Misty her first kiss and Evalon and Naledi had just _died_ of jealousy, even though Blo had an asymmetrical face and weird, big hands. And the time they’d had missed curfew by _three hours…._

Naledi sobbed quietly in her arms, suddenly acutely aware of her own crushing loneliness. Surrounded by the bitter quiet of the sub-lightspeed craft, she felt so alone.

She would never feel the cold rush of ocean water again. Never have use for her bright mechanical tail, her contact lenses, and her gills. She knew there would be nothing for her on an A1 type planet. She’d never meshed well with other base type humans anyway. And she’d never been good at making new friends.

She managed to hoist herself up eventually, tears still streaming from her now throbbing eyes, and go back to staring at the sky outside. They were on a lightspeed highway, hightailing it to PNX 221 or Earth Sub Prime A1 Base, which was nowhere near as beautiful to say as Oceana (even if it was technically called NNY 22/Earth Sub Prime H1 Set, but potato potahto).

It was strange, watching her life fall behind her. With every few million miles, her life on Oceana was becoming more and more of a memory, something that existed only in the past, becoming less and less real with every passing second. 

 She belatedly heard the whoosh of cabin doors, and before she had time to react, her mother was standing in the doorway. Her face was a strange contortion of emotion, she looked constipated with frustration. Her mouth was a thin line bisecting her face; her eyes were round blank orbs. Naledi figured that’s what happened when she tried to feel and couldn’t. Naledi’s mother walked into the cabin like an automaton, all awkward angles and stilted footsteps.

Naledi turned away from her and faced the opposite wall. Her mother just stood there, hovering.

‘Naledi,’ her mother enunciated professionally, like she was talking to a colleague. ‘Your behavior is… I understand you may be frustrated but you have to understand that your father and I have your best interests at heart.’

‘Taking me away from the only life I’ve ever known doesn’t sound very benevolent to me,’ Naledi sighed, scrunching up her face.

Naledi’s mother breathed heavily, trying to be patient apparently, which only served to make Naledi angrier.  ‘You’re very young—‘

‘I’m _thirteen.’_

_‘_ I’m _four hundred and twelve._ You’ve only _just_ hit puberty. I’m well aware of _every_ neurological change in your brain and you—‘

‘You don’t know _anything_ about me,’ 

‘I know _enough,’_ Naledi’s mother’s voice went up a decibel. ‘I’m—‘ she seemed to reconsider her volume and adjusted it accordingly. ‘I’m looking out for you. Your father and I are invested in raising you in an environment where you have the opportunity to thrive. An A1 planet will allow you the opportunity to reach your potential as a base type. I was raised on an A1 planet, and so was your father, and I think you _deserve_ a chance to…. To be amoung humans like yourself, like us, in an environment—‘

‘There were base types on Oceana.’

‘Yes there were, but they were all scientists and academics, and you never got along with them—‘

Naledi turned around, shock written across her features, ‘That’s what this is about?’ she shouted. ‘You want me to make _new friends._ God, I thought you were over that!’

Naledi’s mother bared her teeth and looked Naledi right in the eye. She breathed deeply, evenly. ‘Naledi. I want you to get it out of your head that your _friends—‘_

_‘Oh my god!’_ Naledi’s voice reverberated around the room, tears stung her eyes, ready to fall. ‘You say it like they’ve freaking burned our house down, you _hate_ them—‘

‘You will stop interrupting me right this instant young lady!’ Naledi’s mother screamed, losing all composure. ‘Those _vagrants_ you chose to spend your every waking hour following around like some kind of lost puppy have _nothing_ to do with this. I want you to grow up on a planet where you aren’t forced to attend sub-par schools with _—with—‘_

_‘Randoms_ mom? You want me to hang out with pretty perfect X2s like you?! Smart and perfect and mathematically gifted!’ Naledi was standing. She was crying. Her voice had grown brittle with rage.

Naledi’s mother wrapped her palm about her face in frustration. ‘Naledi this has nothing to do with “ _Randoms_ ” or being an X2. Please get that out of your head.’ She growled.

‘ _Yes it does!’_ Naledi shouted. She was shaking. ‘Because my friends were never good enough for you! Because randoms like me are never going to be good enough! You just want me to hang around with a bunch of X2s so no one notices what a gross ugly Random I am! Because I—‘

‘ _Naledi ya Mars,_ this has nothing to do with your genetics or mine! Are you even listening to me—‘

‘Because you’re the smartest woman in the galaxy and I’m just an idiot, _right_ ,’ Naledi shouted above her mother’s voice.

Naledi’s mother glared then shook her head, frowning deeply. ‘I just don’t understand you.’

‘I thought you “knew _enough”,’_ Naledi spat.

‘I see that I was wrong,’ Naledi’s mother amended stiffly. She turned around and left the cabin.

Naledi had her fists bunched tight enough that her muscles hurt. She screamed at the door. And screamed again. And screamed until all her energy was expended.

She sank to the floor again, sobbing and sobbing until eventually her energy for even that ran out. And all she could do was lie on the floor staring at the ceiling, hating everything and everyone. She felt like a sad limp noodle with no friends and no life and a mother who hated her. And a father who also hated her, but for much better reasons.

The cabin was empty and white, every piece of furniture sleek and understated. It wasn’t her room, just an unfurnished extra room she’d gotten stuck in because her parents were in the control deck a few cabins down, and she’d have to pass them to get to her room. She still had _some_ dignity, and as such had gotten herself stuck here, refusing to willingly be seen by them.

The room was the same as all the others. Boring. A bunch of safety posters lined the walls ‘in case of an emergency’ although it was literally impossible on a highway, in a sub-lightspeed craft, unless it was being operated by a bucket. And even then the auto would take over.

She glanced at the posters, reading them as if she didn’t already know them off by heart. ‘What To Do In The Event Of A Structural Compromise’, ‘8 Steps To Avoid Injury In The Event Of Gravity Reversal,’ ‘How To Take Care Of Your Body On An Extended Trip: For Base Types,’ ‘How To Engage And Operate The Escape Pod,’ ‘The Emergency Care Packet And You.’

Her eyes lingered on the Escape Pod poster. She knew the instructions like the back of her hand, at her parent’s insistence. Just in case the Daleks attacked or something. She rolled her eyes. How To Engage and Operate an Escape Pod. She definitely wished she had that option; the choice to escape. She lifted herself by her elbows, staring at the poster.

How to Engage and Operate an Escape Pod.

She stood up, approaching the poster.

There were ten escape pods on the craft, located in threes at strategic points a short distances from any part of the craft. Her parents were at the center of the ship, and she was at one of the extreme ends, a room away from the escape pods.

Her heart started hammering away at her chest as she reached down and, pressing a finger on the skin of her wrist, turned off her watch. She heard the quiet beep beep it made as it confirmed that it was shutting down. It meant no one would be able to reach her. It also meant her mother would have no means of tracking her.

She reached up and ripped the poster off the wall.

By escape pod, Oceana was only a week away. And she knew the coordinates by heart.

                                                                                ***

Naledi slipped through the door and found herself in the emergency shelter room. It was an enourmous, poorly lit warehouse filled with wires and number pads and all sorts of complicated equipment. She walked along the long corridor leading to the escape pods, her heart hammering louder and louder with every step. She just needed to get to the pods, and then, she’d on her way home. Each step felt like a step into a trap, like any minute now her parents would discover her and grab her by the arm and ground her for the rest of her life. The poster felt insanely heavy in her hand, like lead. It weighed her down.

She tried to keep her mind clear as she reached the wall and pressed the small pad for her index finger. The doors slid silently open, confronting her with a room much, much smaller than the veritable aircraft hanger she was standing in. Along one wall there was a neat row of seven spacesuits for every conceivable size combination of base type human. She was short and relatively slender so she chose the smallest one. She slid it on, on autopilot, until she was all decked in white, with small blue strips to indicate the Oceanan origins of the ship. She put the helmet on too, and pressed the small green button beneath her neck to seal up and pressurize it. She shivered with anticipation as she felt the suit grew to accommodate her. If she was sucked into space right this instant she’d probably survive until she died of dehydration, and even then her body would be perfectly preserved.

She grabbed the poster, reminding herself of her mission as she shivered, aware now, that she was at the cusp of running away. She steeled herself, forcing herself to not be afraid.

A number pad on the door stood between her and freedom. She spared a moment to roll her eyes before she typed in “0000” because for a genius her mother was also kind of dumb. The door slid open, and there, in the other room were the white escape pods, huge, elegant and gleaming with promise. She spared a moment to type in 1807894536566 on the pad and then 110100010010 because it disabled communication between the craft and the pods. According to the poster it was a code to be used ‘In the event of a hostile take-over by enemy combatants.’ so the soldiers or whoever could escape unnoticed. It also worked very nicely for her, so she wasn’t going to complain about the highly unlikely nature of a scenario even approaching that; or the pointlessness of a contingency plan in case it did.

She picked the pod closest to her; it was the size of her bedroom back home, if not larger. She ran her gloved fingers along the sleek metahydroxide BHTy shell and gently tapped the surface twice. A number pad appeared on the veneer of the pod, and she tapped in “0000” again, because _seriously_. A section of the surface disappeared for her and she slipped inside, while it materialized behind her. It beeped quietly, assuring her that the ship was closed and airtight.

She exhaled deeply. She estimated she’d been out here at least thirty minutes now. An hour and a half since her mother and her had argued. Well, screamed in each other’s faces. She doubted they’d notice she was missing for another four or five hours after because their parenting techniques were very ‘by the book’ when they couldn’t deal with her.  She’d yawned her way through ‘Raising an Adolescent in the 23 M. A.M’  enough times that she knew exactly how long the experts at The University expected her to stay in a funk. Her mother followed that thing to the letter, giving her roughly 4 hours and thirty minutes to get to the Pique Loop and get home. She was sure it was possible to find a route to Oceana that made it impossible for her parents to intercept her.

On the pod’s central control deck a couple of HUDs hummed quietly, awaiting input. She double checked the poster and put in the necessary codes, after which the screen changed so she enter the 27 digit coordinates for Oceana. She breathed hard and typed them in, her gloved fingers sliding across the holograms; working on a memory embedded into her heart. And then the coordinates of the Pique Loop.

The Pod silently came alive, hovering a few inches above the ground. The huge airlock doors slid open, and the pod lurched forward a few careful inches at a time, into the airlock. Naledi felt the artificial gravity mechanism activate. And then the ships doors closed behind her. The airlock doors swished open. Naledi held her breath as she felt the ship slip into the unpressurised expanse of empty space.

Two weeks and she’d be back home.

Once the ship was out in the open, she waited ten minutes before getting up and slipping out of her space suit, letting it become a puddle of white on the floor. She double tapped the veneer of the ship, and the white slid away, revealing the black of space. She watched her parents’ ship’s rear very slowly became just slightly smaller and smaller as the pod slid away at a decent 8,550 km per minute. In three hours she’d be at the Pique Loop.

 She was excited but nervous, having only ever travelled through about six Pique Loops in her whole life, and even then only as a passenger. Right now, she had to be a driver. She had to enter the coordinates herself. Not that she didn’t know them, but it was performance anxiety that made her heart beat hard and fast. What if she got a coordinate wrong? What part of space would she suddenly be thrown into? How would she know if she was the eighth sector once she got in the Loop? Would she have enough fuel to get back?

She felt her heart leap into her chest.

It was an hour and a half now. An hour and a half since she’d escaped from her mother’s clutches. Stage fright was not a good enough reason to put an hour and a half like that to waste. She steeled herself, knowing the auto would alert her to the Pique Loop when it was time. It was invisible to the human eye. Well, for base types anyway. She was pretty sure N-type humans could see them, not that it counted. She wasn’t all that sure N-types counted as humans all that much. Probably not.

She sat back on the chair and pushed herself away from the control deck. She sighed, staring out into space. She was almost certain there was a height limit on what counted as human, and nine feet was probably it. And probably non translucent skin too.

The philosophical musings helped. Her heart pressed back down and slowed, her palms stopped sweating so profusely. She called up the HUD. It flickered to life at eye level, and she wrote in the query ‘Oceana’ and information on the planet suddenly filled up the whole pod. It wasn’t like she didn’t know, she _did,_ but She felt the need to see it. Home. Her ultimate destination. She didn’t know what she was going to do once she got there, but it didn’t really matter. She’s make a plan. She’d live at Misty or Avalon’s house and go back to school, maybe get a job and earn some credits.  

She called up another screen and typed up everything she could think to occupy herself with, including geography and atmosphere, superstructure and the freaking bios of the contractors who’d built it. She managed to stretch the whole endeavour into a two and a half hour marathon of more schoolwork than she ought to have been doing during the holidays, and by the time she was done, a yellow light is blinking on the pod’s main HUD. Ten minutes until the loop.

She spent her time getting back into her space suit, ignoring the gentle HUD voice advising her to do exactly that, unless she wanted her blood to literally boil, as the pod passed through the Pique Loop.

 A little pink light began to blink. Five minutes until the loop.

If she didn’t enter any coordinates she’d just go through and remain in the same section of space, she could turn the pod around and try again.

But it was a matter of do or die now. And she wasn’t chicken. She breathed hard. The HUD called up the screen for the communication field between the Pique Loop and the pod. A small blue caret blinked encouragement for her to input her data.

She typed in: 875983451008654372887659185 Quadrant Y, and heard the small confirming beep when she pressed enter and then the ever popular “0000” security code.

She sat back in her chair.

She didn’t like going through Pique Loops, she’d never met a Base Type who did. As the craft made a slight ripple through the hole in space provided by the Loop, she felt her heart rise to her throat and sit there like a lump behind her collarbone.  Beads of sweat began forming on the surface of her skin. She focused on breathing, calming the speed of her heart.

The process always seemed so long, and so _difficult,_ but in half a second she was through to the other side. She sighed a breath she didn’t know she was holding and leaned back on the chair. She glanced at the monitor. The 27 digit coordinates stared back at her.

She had one problem left, finding a route to Oceana that made it impossible for her parents to track her, and also bypassed the planet’s port. Luckily she’d been on enough field trips that she knew of plenty of short cuts thanks to the hard work of shady school ship drivers hired by Oceana’s overworked and underappreciated public schooling system. If she came in just under Orion, there was even a chance that she could hit the Port Authority’s blind-spot, and make it through the atmosphere. And since her watch still listed her as an Oceanan citizen she could probably just lie her way through the rest.

She turned off the auto’s route tracking system and felt the ship come to a slow halt. She input the altered travel route, the security code, and turned the auto back on. The ship lurched forward. Naledi swallowed deep.

The ship lurched forward, and Naledi slipped off her suit.  One week, and she’d be through the atmosphere.

She had the option of spending the week in stasis which, given the way her thoughts kept giving way to panicky fragments of worry, seemed like it was for the best. The Stasis Capsule was the far most compartment of the pod, and Naledi approached it in resignation, uncertain if the next time she woke up would be in her mother’s clutches, or the radiation deposit beneath Orion.

On the veneer of the capsule she tapped twice and a numberpad digitized. She typed in the security code, and the duration of her stasis. The veneer slid apart and she stepped in.

Seven days.

***

‘She must be hungry by now,’ Maru, Naledi’s father picked at the unappetizing slab of protein/lipid matter dejectedly. He could eat if he chose to, his wife was an engineering genius. But the sensation was odd, taste was a little off, and the insides of his mouth were never quite coordinated enough for his liking. But he could chose to turn off his hunger impulses, which he did most of the time, today had been different. He’d been bitten, the moment he woke up, by a nauseating wave of nostalgia for his humanity.

‘If she’s hungry she can come have dinner.’ Letsatsi, his wife, answered monotonously. Sometimes she reverted to what Maru liked to call her ‘factory settings’, like the Letsatsi he knew when they met. Like an android with a broken speech program.

He sighed, having been a distant witness to their fights. His memory cache told him this was a more than common occurrence, and his programming told him never to intervene. And never to take sides. He was the peacemaker; his job was to pick up the pieces. ‘Should I go check up on her?’

Letsatsi leveled him a look. ‘You don’t have to ask for permission.’

Maru shrugged, his skin tingling with discomfort. He had no idea how to tell Letsatsi that he felt like he did.

Letsatsi made no comment on the uneaten food but Maru nonetheless felt her eyes on him as he slid it to the sink.

He made his way across the ship, to his daughter’s room past the control deck. He took a steadying breath and knocked on the doors. No answer. He knocked again.

‘Star,’ he warned. ‘If you don’t let me in, I’m coming in anyway.’

No response. He tapped on the wall beside her door, digitizing a number pad in which he punched in the overriding security code. ‘I warned you. I’m coming in.’ The doors slid open.

Naledi’s bed was unmade, possessions half on the floor, and half nowhere near where they were supposed to be. It irked him a lot more than it bothered his wife, and frustrated him to no end that he no longer knew exactly why that was. It made him feel oddly vague, chasing his programming around every closed loop, looking for reasons behind thought patterns and origins of behavior It made him feel like the bits and pieces missing from his memory were more important than comprehensible, and their loss made his metaphorical heart drown beneath the layers of HGNNA that made up his endoskeleton. It was a stark reminder of his new role as little more than a machine. An Android. A robot.

He swallowed deep and sighed, looking about the room. He would tell her to clean this up later, and when she inevitably didn’t, he would clean it up himself.

He decided to go searching for her in the Preparation room, steeling himself for waves of teenage emotion. Naledi was never altogether reasonable after a fight, and for her to still be in there meant she was still stewing.

But she was nowhere to be seen. He doubled back and tried his own room, then the kitchen—incase she had gotten hungry, the control deck and finally, the emergency pod-craft hangar. She was nowhere to be seen. Maru quelled the insistent beating of his heart with a steady breath, reasoning that it was easy for a girl her size to hide in small places.

He walked into his wife on his way back to the control deck.

‘I can’t find her,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ Letsatsi asked stiffly.

‘I mean, I can’t find Naledi anywhere.’

Letsatsi seemed to consider this. ‘I’ll scout her watch,’ she said.

They made their way to the control deck together. The I-D center covered her in a vague blue mist, checking and identifying her DNA. Inevitably, the center checked Maru’s too; he tried not to react to the ‘NO DNA’ light flashing on the keyboard beneath Letsatsi’s fingers.

His wife input the necessary data with practices ease, and the waited the thirteen seconds it would take to return Naledi’s information.

The computer listed: NOT FOUND

Maru’s artificial heart immediately began pounding, he felt it at the back of his throat.

‘She turned it off,’ Letsatsi grit through her teeth.

‘She’s never turned it off before,’ Maru supplied, incredulous. Naledi knew as well as anyone that turning your watch off was illegal. The idea that she even knew how was utterly beyond him.

‘She’s just hiding somewhere in the ship,’ Letsatsi said in perfect monotone, the depths of her emotions beyond her now. ‘We have to find her and turn in back on before we reach the Galactic 4th Quadrant,’ she instructed.

Maru nodded once, abortively. ‘Why do you think—‘

‘She is a teenager, biologically conceived, she has too many emotions. She does not think rationally.’ Letsatsi moved past him, body vibrating with tempered emotional volatility.  

It wasn’t the question Maru was going to ask, but he went parted from her, towards the opposite side of the ship, towards the Preparation room. He looked around carefully, searching for any piece of the room out of place, for the slightest space between furniture and the walls. Nothing.

He turned his attention to the side of the wall that was plastered with military posters. There was one missing, he scanned his memory cache for all of 68 nano seconds before coming to the conclusion that it was the emergency escape poster.

He swallowed again, deep and hard. He felt like a corpse on HGNNA feet. His head was light and aery. He felt spectacularly nauseous.

There was a single missing spacesuit in the emergency shelter room, just small enough to fit his daughter. He didn’t have to call Letsatsi to press her fingers to the pad for him; he didn’t have to see the hangar to know there was a pod missing. He knew his daughter.

Naledi didn’t do things by halves.


End file.
